


Fractured Chesspieces

by Nerdling_Queen



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Attempted Sexual Assault, BAMF Leo Valdez, Betrayal, Canon Rewrite, Dark, Dubious Morality, Gen, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Manipulation, Manipulative Relationship, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Moral Ambiguity, Murder, Prophecy, Secrets, Sociopathy, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, What Have I Done, dark!Leo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-26
Updated: 2015-11-26
Packaged: 2018-05-03 13:22:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5292617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerdling_Queen/pseuds/Nerdling_Queen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pawns are only truly pawns as long as they are unaware of the hands controlling them.</p><p>(Or: Leo Valdez chose a different path.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fractured Chesspieces

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this between 12:45 and 1:15 this morning, after a week of about 6 hours of sleep per night. I was in a very strange headspace.  
> But I kinda like what I came up with, so here. Have the darkverse rewrite I've been wanting for a while, because I grew up with the original myths; and much like Grimm's fairytales, the originals are far, far darker than the interpretations.  
> Bet this wasn't what you were expecting on Thanksgiving.

Gaia visits Leo Valdez in his mother’s workshop and tells him his future.

 _I cannot kill you, but I can break your spirit_ , and Leo screams and beats on the door and bursts into glorious, dooming flames.

For a moment, she pities the boy. He is a child, an innocent, and she can see the peace in him. He would not hurt her children of his own true will.

But the Fates have other plans, and they will manipulate everything to get their way. Gaia knows she is no less a pawn than the boy, but she _knows_ it, and she uses it.

The boy will learn, or he will be used. Simple.

 

Leo Valdez walks out of the Social Services office with a backpack on his back, a bandage on his arm, and a knife in his pocket. The worker who’d tried to touch him lies in a pool of his own blood in the abandoned room, hands cut off and throat cut.

Leo walks, and when that isn’t enough, he runs.

Gaia rumbles and shifts beneath his feet, and murmurs, _Interesting_.

 

Leo kills the second human when he is thirteen, and then again and again and again, and it’s sixteen by his fourteenth birthday. Not counting the monsters.

Gaia hears the panic from Olympus and below, the wonder and terror, because this isn’t in the plan.

She smiles, and wonders if Leo will kill her too, if she told him what was meant for him and why his mother is dead.

 

The one who tells him is a girl, a daughter of some minor goddess, and Gaia is disappointed that the game is ruined. She wonders about killing her, but Leo goes off on another path now, one where he _knows_ , and Gaia decides that this is too entertaining to kill the girl. She might even deserve some kind of gratitude.

Leo reads and reads, and kills the librarian when she tries to stop him from taking the myth books. Gaia smiles, and makes a decision.

 _Hello, Leo_ , she says in his dreams, and he doesn’t try to kill her.

 _Lady Gaia,_ he says instead, and looks at her without fear. _Why are you here?_

 _You are not following the plan,_ she tells him, and he smiles.

_I know._

_You have been destined to destroy me._

_Why would I do that?_

 

Leo is interesting, and clever, and entertaining. Gaia likes the boy, and the boy seems to tolerate her well enough.

She wonders if he remembers her role in his mother’s death. She wonders if he cares.

 

 _Who broke him,_ she wonders, and realizes that she might never know.

 

Leo is caught by the police, but they don’t know about the deaths, only that Leo’s been fleeing the system for not-quite a decade. They send him to the Wilderness School, and there is Piper.

Leo likes her.

Jason appears out of nowhere, and the gods try to make Leo believe their lies. He sees the illusions and plays along, but he knows the truth.

He sees Piper buy it all, take it down so easy, and sighs to himself. She could have been so useful, so entertaining. But she is a god’s tool, just like the rest.

They are so _boring_ , but Leo doesn’t want to die just yet, so he follows them into the belly of the beast, and he smiles.

 

Gaia waits, and speaks with him in his dreams, and tells him about Khaos and Creation and Life and Death.

 _I miss my Parent,_ she confesses once, and doesn’t expect him to respond. _It is locked below Nyx and Tartarus, and I will not see It again._

Leo looks at her.

 _You have no right to speak of missing family_ , he says, and then Gaia is shoved out as he awakens.

She pauses, gathers her thoughts, because _he knows, and he remembers, and he has not forgiven me._

 _I wonder what he will do_ , and she wonders if he will be nothing but a pawn in the game after all, from hatred or love or something equally human.

 

She wonders, sometimes, what exactly is broken inside Leo Valdez. Sometimes, he is perfectly human, and then sometimes he is nothing like any being born since the Beginning: sometimes, he is nothing less than like her parent.

She wonders what role It plays, and why It has entered the game, and whether It has entered at all. She wonders who Esperanza Valdez was, and she wonders if Hephaestus really holds a claim to Leo.

She wonders what hold she has on the boy, and she wonders if he will ever tell her.

 

Leo plays along, because it won’t do to upset the gods any more than he has. They’re already scared of his rebellion, the trail of mortal souls snuffed out he leaves behind; one more offense, and they might try to cast their sights elsewhere.

Leo doesn’t care about much anymore, but he does like being alive. So he goes along with it, for now, because he’s not strong enough yet.

He can wait.

 

Piper watches Leo, sometimes, because every once in a while there’s something in his eyes…

But then he’s laughing and building and bright again, and she shakes it away, because it’s _Leo_.

 

Gaia smiles. _Silly mortals. So trusting._

And times ticks down, down, down, closer and closer, and Gaia visits demigods in their dreams and tells her followers their duties, and waits.

 

Leo kills a boy in Long Island, and it’s in the news the next day. The camp mutters about monsters, and Chiron looks out at the horizon with weary eyes, and Leo looks at his hands and remembers the blood and the scream.

He smiles, and tells Piper and Jason it’s because the ship construction is going well.

 

Percy Jackson awakens, and Gaia watches.

 

Gaia keeps Leo informed of the proceedings on the other side of the pantheon.

Leo builds his ship and keeps everyone fooled, and Gaia smiles and awaits the ending of this new story.

 

Gaia watches.

Leo waits.

The Fates do both, and wonder what the gods they lied to think of this.

 

They go to New Rome, and Leo causes a war.

He tells them he’s sorry and blames the eidolons skulking around, though he doesn’t name them and they haven’t tried to touch his mind yet. One of them gives him a respectful nod, and he doesn’t reciprocate.

Leo has never felt so bright, like he’s filled with the blaze of a burning city. He wonders if there’s a name for this feeling.

All he can think is _exhilaration_ and _ecstasy_ and _bliss_ , and he decides that he doesn't need more.

 

 _The day approaches, Leo,_ Gaia warns, and Leo smiles in his sleep.

 

“Something’s wrong,” Piper whispers to Annabeth, and, “I don’t know how to fix it.”

“I’m scared.”

 _It’s been too long to stop,_ she doesn’t know. _This is a long time in coming,_ and _you never stood a chance,_ and _the gods know nothing._

  


This is not the gods’ chessboard, and the Seven are not their pawns to play with.

 

It has been so long, and It had grown bored. It cannot Create anything more, only take what It has already and repeat.

So why not try for a new cycle, with new players and new outcomes?

It smiles, and the Fates take notice, and spin their tapestry accordingly.

 

The first time Leo ever killed someone, his eyes were nebula, endless darkness and bright sparks of color and a black hole in the center.

The first time Leo killed someone, It took something inside Leo away, and Leo hasn’t been whole since.

Leo cannot be whole again.

Leo does not _want_ to be whole again, because he knows what will happen to him if he is, and he cannot follow the plan if that missing piece gets in the way.

 

_Was this deliberate? Did you choose the son of Hephaestus solely because you had to break the centerpiece, and the irony was too great to resist? I hadn’t thought you had a sense of humor so developed._

There is no answer, but she had not expected one.

 

 _What is your plan,_ she screams into the sky. _What is your endgame_ , and the ground splits and buckles and mortals scream and fall and shatter like porcelain dolls, and there is no answer.

There is no answer, and Gaia _screams_.

 

(There is never an answer, and Gaia _understands_.)

 

Piper calls the meeting because there’s nothing else to do.

“Leo is gone,” she says, and she slaps his note and toolbelt on the table.

 

 _Khaos was always the answer,_ Leo wrote, and told them to keep their guard up. _The game is immense, and the gods know nothing._

_We are not the only pieces in the game._

_They lied to you. They lied to everyone._

_It took something from me, and I don’t want it back, but I know I should. I’m the broken machine._

_It’s fire, Jason. It has to be fire. You can’t do it._

 

Annabeth comes out of her room a day later and calls them back.

“I understand,” and It smiles.

It had made good decisions in the champions of this game.

 

( _I don’t want it back_ , Leo tells It, and It nods.

Then it is mine.

_I’m better without it, Leo says_ , eyes burning black, and It smiles.)

 

_What is your choice?_

  


The gods watch Leo Valdez leave the Argo II, and Hephaestus covers his face with his hands.

“He’s the broken machine,” he breathes, and the Council stares at him.

 

_(The Fates lied, but not to everyone.)_

_Go home,_ Leo tells Piper in her dream. _You will do no good here._

 _You’re my friend,_ she insists, and he sighs.

_I thought you were smart._

(She wakes up, and she cries, and they keep course to old Olympus.)

 

Leo stands at the place of execution and opens his palms.

 _What is your will,_ he whispers, and It does not reply.

Leo smiles.

It’s up to him.

 

Percy bleeds onto the stone, and Gaia rises.

 _Hail, Leo Valdez,_ she murmurs, and it should be a joke or jab but it isn't. _Hail, my Parent’s Heir._

And Leo smiles once more, and takes out his knife, the one he took when he was eight, the one he used to cut off a man’s hands and slit his throat.

“Hail, sister,” and she opens her eyes just as the knife enters her ribcage.

 

They blaze, and Leo’s smile has never been so wide, and Gaia keeps her eyes open until they burn out of existence.

 

Gaia falls to ash as magma surges under the planet’s skin and hundreds of volcanoes spontaneously erupt, and Leo Valdez stands atop Olympus, and the Six look on.

 

“Go home,” he tells them tiredly, and then there they are.

 

 _What am I to do?_ Leo asks.

Claim your throne, It replies, and Leo disappears.

 

Leo sits on a metaphysical throne, below Erebus and Tartarus and Nyx, and he is surrounded with his Parent.

He smiles, and watches the mortal world, and kills those who deserve it with a thought.

He waits.

It waits with him, and lets him pick the pieces when they grow bored of waiting for the next cycle.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment, yeah? Tell me what you thought?


End file.
